


YWTP Epilogues: The Dead Return To Life

by Leopardmask



Category: Hermitcraft
Genre: Gen, Reasonable quantities of fluff, Sequel, demise - Freeform, non-permanent minecraft death, post-Demise, season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:35:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 8,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28794003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leopardmask/pseuds/Leopardmask
Summary: The Demise curse has been lifted, but 16 hermits are still undead and grey. With the magic that made them that way gone, the hermits must each find their own ways to bring color back to their lives.
Comments: 68
Kudos: 65





	1. Once Living, Twice Dead

**Author's Note:**

> This is a SEQUEL to [_You Walk The Path To Your Own Demise._](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27026158) So yeah, I couldn't resist writing about some of the hermits' adventures in un-demising themselves, and because this is me we're talking about, I had to write a story for EVERYone. They'll come out once a day until I'm done, they'll be in the order they Demised in, and length and detail will vary wildly based mostly on how much actually happened in their videos. Also, as with YWTP, the timeline jumps back and forth a bit.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grimdog lives.

Demise had ended. But the hermits weren’t quite back to normal yet. Many of them were still grey, still technically undead. Mumbo had quickly gotten to work on a device that would, somehow, restore color and life to the hermits, but that wouldn’t work on everyone. So many people had changed more than just their colors.

One of those people was Ren. His clothes and voice were still Grimdog’s. He would have to find a different way of returning to his normal self, and he had a theory: if Ren was killed by the rules of Demise, now that the game was done, he might just return alive. So, he sought out the one person who was, technically, still on an opposing side.

They met up in the Sahara meeting room. “Hello, Mr. ...Grim?” Iskall asked tentatively.

“No **Grim** here anymore,” Ren replied. “Ahem. At least, he’s not **supposed to** be. ...I need your help.” 

He briefly explained his idea to Iskall. “So, yeah. Does that make sense?”

Iskall frowned. “Hmm... nope. Doesn’t make any sense.”

“Okay. Good,” Ren said with a laugh.

As they left the building, Iskall casually put their hand on Ren’s shoulder, but pulled away when Ren flinched. “Sorry.”

“You’re good, dude,” Ren reassured them. “Must have been a static shock or something.” He grinned. “For a moment, I almost thought I felt my heart beat!”

Iskall cackled at Ren’s mock-flirtatious smile. “How romantic.”

\-----

Iskall set forth five challenges for Ren. It almost felt like being back on the Demise Dares field -only this time, he would only win diamonds if he survived _every_ challenge... and survival was not the final goal.

Still, he did well in two of the challenges. Sure, Iskall almost killed him with an arrow, but that was an accident. And that arrow delivered a bit more of the same energy shock that he had felt when Iskall had touched him outside Sahara. Ren questioned Iskall about it, wondering if his friend was actually dabbling in magic for once. Iskall looked thoughtful, hand drifting to their dragon headpiece, then replied, “No... not on purpose, anyway.”

Water caused his first Demise, but lava caused his second. To Ren, the flames felt like they were burning away his deathly pall. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking as he fell to his knees on the shore of the lava sea.

Iskall looked on with bated breath. The moment Ren vanished into code, Iskall felt what they now recognized as Stress’s magic, filtered through the original dragon head into a spell that encouraged and brought life.

\-----

  
Ren felt a cool breeze on his skin. He actually _felt_ the cool breeze, and the concrete platform below him. He looked around, finding himself at the original worldspawn. At the sight of his red shirt, Ren grinned harder than he had in a long time. He was back, baby! And the voice, cloak, every trace of Grimdog had vanished - **forever.**


	2. The Monster Freed From The Ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stress needs no one's help to bring herself back to life.

Iskall landed on an ice floe and looked up at the iceberg above them. They smiled at the hint of pink encased deep within. Of course Stress’s magic had worked for her intended spell, just as it had worked for the world as a whole. Far be it from Iskall to figure out how the colorless, cold ice could actually _restore_ life to a colorless, cold hermit, but here they were.

Iskall wasn’t sure how - or whether - to wake Stress, now that they were here. They just had a feeling that they needed to be here, at this time-

The pink spot turned into a pink glow, surrounding Stress and filtering magenta light through the ice.

Then the iceberg exploded.

Iskall raised their arms defensively as slivers of ice rained down on their head. The glow dispersed, and Stress stepped cautiously out of the cavern she had blasted. She gasped in glad surprise to see her friend. “Iskall!” she cried, sliding down the slope and barreling into a hug. “I’m so glad to see you!”

“Good to see you too,” Iskall laughed. “Look at you! You’ve un-Demised, just like you said you would!”

“I did!” Stress beamed. “Now ‘ang on a minute - how did you know to be here? You haven’t been waitin’ here for long, I hope?”

Iskall tapped the snout of the dragon head they still wore. “I just knew. I’ll bet the magic you put in this thing told me.”

“And you’re still wearing it,” Stress giggled. “So, wait - that means that either people are still Demising, or...” She raised her eyebrows hopefully. 

Iskall just grinned.

“Oh my god, you won!” Stress cheered, bouncing on her toes. “Did the dragon ‘ead help? I wasn’t sure it would, I just wanted to see if I couldn’t give somebody a leg up, y’know? Bit of a cheat if it did help, I suppose, but...”

“Oh, it helped, alright,” Iskall confirmed. “And not just me - Stress, your wild magic, in this dragon head, helped to save the world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's really no reason for me to go for the Scary Stories titles anymore since this doesn't have the same book theme that I was going for but I couldn't resist :P


	3. You'll Sleep When You're Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The admin is dead, but I'm sure everything will bee fine.

Xisuma stood in front of a white structure with colors shooting out the top. He considered the door for a while. Assuming it worked properly for him, he would be back to his normal, living self in no time.

Then, he turned and walked away.

During Demise, even with the loss of his admin magic, he had gone a little bit mad with power. He could see, now, how scary, how _cruel_ he must have seemed to the people around him. And yet, now that his head was clearer, he found himself avoiding a return to the land of the living - at least for the moment.

It seemed silly to say, but this strange form of undead really was surprisingly peaceful. Xisuma thought he could see why being undead appealed to Cleo. He barely had to deal with anything a living body might have needed - especially nice when it came to his breathing. Xisuma had always struggled with breathing normally. Usually he had a mechanism in his helmet to help, but there was always the nagging possibility that something might happen to the helmet, leaving him gasping. But now… there was none of that worry. Dead people didn’t need to breathe.

His admin abilities... those were still offline. Xisuma could do a few simple commands from memory, either mentally or typing them into the communicator he kept around as backup, but for most of the more complex tasks, he relied on input from his suit and helmet, which were of course as dead as he was.

Not that this was all bad, either. Xisuma often had a lot of admin work to do, or made a lot of work for himself when none presented itself. Demise had briefly made him into a very different person, but as that person he felt, ironically, much more free to do as he pleased. Now, even though his mind was back to normal, Xisuma still enjoyed that freedom, channeling it toward more constructive things than the destructive goals of the Greyskins. Without his magic, Xisuma couldn’t be tempted to do all the admin tinkering he would normally turn to; he had no excuse not to take a break and treat his time like any other Player would. There was the occasional worry in the back of his mind about leaving the server with no major admin, but there were three minor admins to take care of little issues. When something big came up - there had been a few murmurs about wanting to move to a new world soon, possibly to get away from the lingering remnants of Demise - only then would Xisuma give in and find a way to reanimate himself.

\-----

Eventually, that day did come. Everyone agreed they were ready to move on, and Xisuma had to be available to do the moving. So, back to the Saturator he went. Its track record had been anywhere from perfectly fine to rainbow disaster, but most of the hermits that went in had come out in some sort of alive state, so it seemed like it would be Xisuma’s best bet. So, he pressed the button, stepped in, and closed his eyes as colors swirled around him.

He gave an involuntary shudder as life and warmth returned to him all at once. Opening his eyes, Xisuma smiled to see that he was back in living color. Even his visor tint was back to what he was used to. His brown leather gloves, tanned skin, yellow armor-

Yellow armor?

Xisuma got an oddly ominous feeling in his chest. Yellow armor was not normal for him. Nothing was wrong, he thought, almost forgetting that he could scan himself to make sure. It was probably just a color glitch, like some of the other hermits had experienced. He gave it a mental shrug and moved on, continuing to prepare for a worldhop. Even as he removed his elytra and stored them away, Xisuma never noticed the second, vestigial set of insect-like wings fluttering gently underneath.


	4. Far From Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jevin tried to run away from the curse. Its effect was already weak on him; surely with distance, it would simply break... right?

Jevin sat back and smiled, watching a couple of bees bump around their new apiary. It wasn’t much, but they had their flowers, and they were helping the crops that a nearby villager was waiting to harvest. A cool breeze gusted through the high valley in which Jevin had started making a home.

It was nice, being on his own now and then. He did this often - spending most of his time with his friends, then hopping to a private world for a few weeks, and joining the hermits again in their next world. He would take breaks like this even if it wasn’t to escape an annoying voice in his head. Thankfully, this hop  _ had _ been an escape: he hadn’t heard from the voice since he spawned into this world - though his skin was still grey, and he had been exploring this world as technically one of the undead. He found that he was slow to heal, always bearing minor nicks and scrapes, and if something bent him out of shape, he had to consciously force himself back to normal. He wasn’t a living entity with his usual characteristic ability to bounce back.

He thought often about how the others were doing. Had they figured out what to do about this grey thing yet? If so, would he be able to revive himself as well? He still planned on joining them in their next world, not the one he had left - just in case the spirit of Demise was still around to try to drive him off again - but that bore the risk of leaving behind a solution entirely in the previous world. 

Jevin also wondered if he’d ever learn why that spirit was so interested in him, even though he was somehow halfway immune to its spell. For that matter, why  _ was _ he halfway immune to that spell?

He had just stood up, ready to do a bit of building on a storage room, when suddenly an interesting  _ shift _ washed over him, making him sway in surprise. He felt a little more energized, a little less dull, a little more... free. He had a spring back in his step. Something must have happened all the way over in the hermits’ world, because once again, Jevin was  _ alive. _

His sense of touch was back to normal, too - and what he felt first was very itchy. All over his body, irritations he needed to scratch away  _ now. _ Jevin rubbed himself against the glass corner of his apiary, frantically scraping at every part of himself he could reach - and watching the grey flake away like ash, leaving behind a cleaner, more vibrant blue than ever. Grey bits poured out of his sweater as he yanked it over his head and shook it out.

  
Soon, his movements became less manic, less urgent, more methodical, as he found himself once again more blue than grey. He brushed away his pieces of dead self as he found them, each one just as satisfying to leave behind.  _ Now _ he was truly alive again, able to relax peacefully in his little valley, but earnestly awaiting his return for the hermits’ next adventure.


	5. The Good, The Bad, and the Deadly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scar's given someone a bad time.

Ever since the Demise curse lifted, Scar worked tirelessly on a machine. It wasn't conventional redstone, no, Scar had no hope of achieving what he wanted to do with redstone. It was all magic... and electricity. A metal and glass spire reached from an inner chamber all the way up to the roof, waiting for its moment.

Finally, everything was ready. Now, all he needed was a storm.

\-----

"Hello!" Scar yelled into thin air. "I know you're here - you always are. Show yourself!". 

For a moment, nothing happened. Thunder boomed overhead. Then Scar heard a laugh. Behind him, someone materialized and walked over with a sardonic grin, identical to Scar's - but still in color. Jellie, who had been sitting patiently in a corner of the room, puffed up her tail and hissed. 

"This is a surprise. You don't usually  _ invite _ me to the party."

"No, I don't. You usually just show up whenever you feel like it," Scar accused his double. 

"But, apparently, there's a first time for everything," BadTimes purred. "Did you finally decide to accept my presence?"

"No," Scar said bluntly. "You just happen to have something I want."

BadTimes narrowed his green eyes. “Really, now? What could I possibly give to you, the man who has everything?”

Scar’s grey eyes glowed blue. “Life.”

BadTimes jumped into the air, almost dodging the magic Scar threw at him. Scar followed his living double upward. They met near the high, vaulted ceiling, high enough to hear the rain pounding on the roof. Scar and BadTimes had been equally matched once upon a time, but Scar now had the advantage of being used to a physical form, even a dead one. He tackled BadTimes, pinning the double’s hands and wings with magic restraints. Thus bound, they crashed to the floor again, and Scar heaved BadTimes bodily into the glass chamber in the center of the room, sealing the door with magic.

“You’re a vex mage, not a vampire,” BadTimes hissed, throwing himself against the glass. Scar’s magic kept BadTimes firmly in the physical plane, unable to escape. “What are you hoping to accomplish?”

“Oh, you know, just a little trade,” Scar replied casually, fluttering back up to the top of the cage and encasing the lid in magic. Energy would attract energy... he hoped. He landed back at a control panel. “I know I can’t get rid of you, but I can still inconvenience you a little more.”

Scar rested his hands on the panel, his magic connecting him to the machine. Any second now... any second...

Thunder boomed. The room flashed white.

\-----

Scar blinked the spots from his eyes. His ears were ringing. Vex magic was wrapped around his hands and around his wings. He stumbled sideways, into a curved glass wall.

He could feel again - felt  _ alive. _ He had done it! Scar dismissed the magic, rubbing his wrists and stretching his wings. He was in his resurrection chamber, in full life and color. Which meant...

Scar stepped out of the chamber and looked toward the control panel. Behind it stood BadTimes, now inhabiting the grey body that Scar had dealt with for months. Scar gave him a cheeky smile. “Enjoying your new look?”

BadTimes glared at Scar. Scar dared to giggle as BadTimes’s body flickered briefly. “Still can’t keep a form without someone stabilizing you, huh? That’s a shame. Well, see ya!”

“You dirty sneak!” BadTimes leaped at Scar, but Scar was already shooting toward the roof, and BadTimes was disappearing into his ghostly form once more. Scar felt his double’s presence pressing in, but he knew BadTimes would be weak after that encounter, especially now that BadTimes’ physical form wasn’t even living anymore. Scar flew out into the storm, enjoying the feeling of the wind and rain on his wings. Someday, he would have to deal with an angry BadTimes. But today, for the first time in months, Scar was free - and alive.


	6. Vex Salvation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ConVex are under new-old ownership.

Cub staggered sideways into one of a row of beds, earning concerned looks from an iron golem and a few villagers who had been brave enough to come near. He hadn’t hurt any of the villagers yet, but they could tell he wasn’t himself lately, and had been staying out of his way.

Cub sat down on the bed and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. The headache that had been either missing or ignored in the past weeks was back. Although... it was fading fast, leaving Cub only dizzy and tired. The constant energy and power, freezing hot in every vein, receded to something a little more manageable. More familiar.

**Our servants have returned!**

Cub’s head snapped up. That wasn’t the voice that had been poking and pushing at him for weeks. This was a genuinely  _ joyful _ voice.  **It seems we have!** Cub replied happily.  **Demise is over - you were right about the other contract ending when the game was won!**

**Somewhat,** Vexnos amended.  **Although we worked with a temporary servant in your stead. Through him, we discovered a countermagic that had already been laid, waiting to awaken. And only control was lifted - the transformations remain, until each of ye seeks to change your form.**

**You can do that for Scar and me, though, right?** Cub asked, now reminded and made aware of his stretched, Vex-grinning face. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but now that he was back in his right mind, it still felt twisted and _wrong._ **And the other hermits?**

**Of course. Come to the statue ye made, where our magic is strongest. Any others may come and be changed as well.**

**Not sure how many would want to mess with Vex,** Cub admitted,  **after all this. But maybe if someone tries another way, we could... help them out?**

**We will grant ye this.** There was the familiar twinkle of mischief in their voice.  **But if this comes to pass, we may take our own liberties. Harmless, of course...**

Cub laughed. Some good old Vex fun would be nice. Now quickly recovered from the transfer of power, Cub hopped up and made his way out of the villager apartment and over to the cliffside where a representation of Vexnos’ face glimmered in the rock. “I’m here,” he announced aloud. “I ask that you transform me back, to the way I was before I Demised.”

Vexnos giggled.  **A very precise request. Ye have learned some things in our service, after all.**

A bolt of magic arced from the face to Cub’s chest, knocking him back. The change was instant and welcome. Cub breathed his first breath in six weeks and gave Vexnos’ face a genuine, human smile. “Thank you, Vexnos, for all the... well. For everything, really. For everything.”


	7. In Loving Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the magic of Demise no longer fueling him, Tango could no longer survive.

Tango dragged awake feeling more disoriented than respawn had ever made him before. He ran a diagnostic, calibrated a few things, and everything seemed perfectly normal, but nonetheless it felt like something had gone very wrong.

He was in his base, as expected. His most recent memory was oddly fuzzy. He had been doing something with Impulse... something to try to keep the other hermits safe... 

_ That was four weeks ago. _

Tango shot up in bed, grimacing as the mechanisms in his chest scraped and bound with disuse. A timing circuit problem? No, he had just calibrated it. Had he somehow been unconscious or shut down for a month? Tango checked his communicator, intending to ask what might have happened, but got distracted seeing a flurry of private messages from Zedaph. Tango gave a bemused check-in, assuring Zedaph that he was fine and in his base, and decided to wait and just ask Zedaph about this when he arrived.

Zedaph burst through Tango’s portal, with Impulse in tow. As if Tango didn’t have enough to worry about, he felt a brief thrill of panic upon seeing Impulse. Why was he here?? Why would Zedaph invite a Greyskin- wait, how  _ did _ Impulse die? And wasn’t he-

A flash of memory returned. Tango frantically brought his hand to his chest. Normal, just like the diagnostic had said. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t a Greyskin. But Impulse was. How-

His train of thought was interrupted by a tackle-hug from Zedaph.

“Tango! Oh my goodness,” Zedaph crowed. “I saw your death message right after Doc’s, and I was scared you might not respawn right, you were so busted up last time I saw you-”

“Wait wait wait wait,” Tango interrupted. “Back up a sec. What do you mean I died right after Doc? It was  _ Impulse _ and me who died together... right?”

Zedaph frowned. Then, realization dawned on his face. He shared a look with Impulse: a look of understanding, and just a hint of pity.

Tango hated being out of the loop, and he especially hated being  _ pitied. _ “Okay, what’s going on??”

“Demise is over,” Zedaph smiled. “As of... about an hour ago, maybe less even. Doc was the last one to die, and that ended it. Then you died a couple seconds later.”

“You and I did demise at the same time,” Impulse continued. “We fell into a trap together and both blew up. You were a Greyskin for four weeks.”

“So, if Demise is over and I went straight back to normal, why are you still grey?” Tango narrowed his eyes at Impulse.

“The Greyskin curse kind of... I guess the magic that turned us this way didn’t automatically turn everyone back, now that it’s gone.”

“I don’t think you did go ‘straight back to normal’, Tango,” Zedaph explained. “The magic that changed and controlled everyone got pulled away when things ended, and that just left everyone grey, but otherwise normal. But-” Zedaph cleared his throat, his voice a little tight. “You weren’t just being controlled, I think - you were being  _ powered _ by Demise magic. After you got blown up, your entire torso was basically missing. There... there wasn’t much left of  _ you. _ If the Demise magic was the only thing keeping your body alive, even as some sort of undead, then when that magic left, you just straight-up died again. And I guess the world tried to put you back the way you were before, because you can’t survive as a grey.”

“Honestly, you got lucky,” Impulse pointed out, his hand drifting upward to brush the hole he still sported in his skull. “Just respawn and bam. You don’t have to deal with having a broken, dead body. The rest of us... well, we’ll have to figure something out.”

“So, I guess my memory got reset to before... no, just after I Demised?” Tango asked skeptically. “That seems... weird. If I really try hard, I can definitely remember something very bad and uncomfy happening right after I respawned from the trap. But literally nothing else from then on.”

“Not that I had a whole lot of my mental faculties either, after we Demised,” Impulse explained, “but I remember you were acting really weird. I think one of your circuits that got blown was the one that writes memories? So you were just acting on working memory and on whatever the thing controlling us wanted. Your memories of being a Greyskin weren’t erased. You just never stored them in the first place.”

“That’s so weird,” Tango contemplated. “Four weeks, just... nothing. It doesn’t feel like I lost time, it just feels like my timing sense is off, you know?”

“I can’t even imagine,” Impulse murmured. “But hey, at least you’re back with us now. The Greyskin curse is gone, you’re back, and everyone’s at least acting normal again, even if we don’t all look it yet.”


	8. Electric Pulse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing else has worked, and Impulse is getting desperate to find something, anything, to revive himself.

“No, no no no-” Impulse stared at his hands. His hands, still covered in bloodstains, but now of a different color. There was no pounding heartbeat or sped-up breathing to belie his worry. He tried putting a helmet on, but immediately snatched it off his head again. The machine hadn’t worked.

\----- 

Impulse knocked nervously on the giant mansion door. Within moments, it was opening for him. Scar stepped out, familiar smile quirking at the sight. "Well, well, well! Welcome to the mansion!”

“Thank you!” Impulse greeted. “You’re looking good these days.” 

Scar was casually standing in full, living color, wings resting loosely against his back. “Oh, I’m feeling good! But I see that you, well...”

“Yeah,” Impulse agreed, indicating his broken skull and white eyes. “Not so good. None of the other machines that everyone else is making would really work for me; you can see, I already went through the Saturator, and it gave me color back, but I’m still pretty dead. But I hear your invention is a little more specialized?”

“Yeah, come see!” Scar bounced down the hall, barely waiting for Impulse to follow. “Except, hmm, it might be a little  _ too _ specialized for you...”

Impulse nodded as Scar explained the basics. “And don’t tell anyone else how this worked,” Scar finished. “Please? Especially not Cub. He had an easy way of getting back to normal all ready for us, but this was... a personal project I needed to do.”

Impulse smiled. "Don't worry - my lips are sealed! And you know what? Now that I know how it works, I might be able to modify it to work for me. With your help on the magic side of things, of course.”

\-----

Impulse sat back on his heels. “I can’t say I’ve ever worked on anything like this before, but I think we’ve got a chance here.”

The two returned to the room itself. “You said it needed a thunderstorm, though?” Impulse asked.

Scar nodded. “Lightning powered, you know.”

Impulse put down his ender chest. “I think I might have... no, of course not. Maybe in my storage. You have some setup to do here, right?”

“Oh, a little magic here, a little there,” Scar confirmed.

“Alright,” Impulse decided. “You do that, and while you do, I’m going to head to my base and see if I can find a nether star to throw in the thunder shrine and get us a storm.”

\-----

“It’s all ready,” Scar announced when Impulse returned, thunder rumbling overhead. “If you’ll just come over here and put your hand on the control panel for a moment-”

Impulse obliged, and Scar put one hand on his shoulder. A shiver of magic ran through Impulse. “Whoa! Okay - what was that for?”

“Just making sure,” Scar said lightly. “You go in the chamber, I’ll set the controls and leave the room. You don’t want me getting caught up in this with you if it goes wrong!”

“What a vote of confidence.” Impulse laughed as he stepped into the glass tube.

Moments after Scar left, the first bolt of lightning struck. Impulse grimaced at the jolt, but once it passed, nothing had changed. But almost...

“Not enough power,” Impulse murmured, looking up at the ceiling. He stood still for a moment, making a decision. Then he jumped out of the glass chamber. A quick elytra rocket later, he was on a small ledge near the ceiling, mining through the roof. He shuddered and reluctantly put on a helmet to keep the rain from pouring onto his exposed brain.

_ Gotta get there before the storm passes. _ The steep roof was almost impossible to climb in the pouring rain. Another lightning bolt lit up the sky. “Not yet, not yet,” he told it.

Finally, he made it to the huge metal and glass spire sticking out of the roof. Scar had put another accretion of magic on the top of the rod, to adjust the machine and attract lightning faster. Impulse broke away some of the insulating glass, so that he could press himself right against the metal.

“Alright!” he yelled over the wind. “I’m ready! Do your worst!”

The storm blustered and raged around him. Impulse had just enough time to start maybe regretting his decision, when lightning struck its mark, and his world exploded.

\-----

Impulse’s ears were ringing. Every few seconds, a booming sound vibrated him to the bone. He groaned and put his hands to his head, knocking his helmet off. He was just barely conscious enough to realize and appreciate that his head was  _ normal _ again. He took a deep breath, and he could appreciate that too.

“Oh! You’re awake already!” A potion was thrust into Impulse’s face. He drank it, shuddering a little at the too-sweet taste. It did make him feel much more coherent, though. He sat up and looked around.

Impulse was on the grounds outside Scar’s mansion, sitting on a platform of crystalline blue, with another piece of blue floating above his head, blocking the rain that was still pouring down. Scar was standing nearby, wings fluttering nervously, but looking pleased.

“Yeah... how long was I out?” Impulse asked hoarsely.

“Oh, not long at all!” Scar reassured him. “I only just set you down here a moment ago. You know, I heard you mining, and I came in to see why, and you were outside doing something, but by the time I came out to meet you, you were falling off the roof! You’re lucky I caught you and brought you down safely! What in the world were you doing up there??”

“Wasn’t enough power going into the tube,” Impulse murmured, staring at his shaking hands. “Had to... had to go straight to the source.” He looked back at Scar and grinned. “It worked, didn’t it?”

Scar burst into a relieved giggle. Impulse joined him.

"Oh! Dude, Impulse, did you notice?" Scar exclaimed. "Your shirt has more color in it than before you Demised!"

Impulse raised his eyebrows and looked down at his shirt, now sporting a yellow creeper face on the front and yellow trim on the sleeves. "Oh wow, you're right! That can't be from the lightning... can it?"

"It must be," Scar pointed out. "You didn't have that when you came here. Or maybe it’s from the magic - you just can’t always predict what’s going to happen!"

Impulse wrapped his arms around himself. “Can we get inside? I appreciate the magic umbrella, but I’m still soaked from being on the roof.”

Scar jumped into action. “Yes! Of course!”

“I wonder,” Impulse said as they rounded the corner, “how similar to a regular zombie I was. I might have been able to just go the golden apple and potion of weakness route, instead of going through all this.” He laughed again. “This was more fun though, I think.”

“Oh, no, you might have,” Scar winced sympathetically. “I mean, I guess this was more fun, if you say so...”

Scar turned to keep walking. Impulse looked down, opening and closing the fingers on one hand, watching the electricity arc between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Residual charge from the lightning or new electric superpowers...? You decide!!


	9. Spectral Show

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Saturator gets a glowing review from Grian.

Grian put his hands on his hips and inspected the colorful chamber in front of him, ignoring the setting sun. Mumbo’s Saturator. Which would supposedly restore everyone to living color. Grian had no idea this was even possible with redstone. Maybe it wasn’t. But Grian admittedly didn’t know a lot about redstone machines; it had taken him four tries to rebuild the concrete maker that  _ he _ had broken in the first place. With a shrug, he stepped in the door.

Immediately, a riot of light and sound assaulted his senses. Colored sand flew around the edges, the beacon in the middle flashed rainbow lights all around, and a chaos of noteblocks sounded under the floor. Grian could only freeze and stare around at the display.

Finally, everything quieted. The beacon returned to a steady white glow. Grian tentatively backed out of the room and prepared to fly away from the dangerous nighttime space.

As soon as he left the small circle of light around the building, Grian noticed something odd: there was still light around him. Faint, but present. He looked at his hands and jumped. His skin was  _ glowing. _ So was his sweater, by the looks of things. He twisted and turned, looking at himself from all angles and experimentally waving his arms. Yep, he was definitely the one casting this light. It looked like he had been hit with a spectral arrow, except the effect from those only lasted a few moments.

Now that he was getting used to it, it was kind of cool. But the glow would probably wear off eventually... he hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There'll be a few of these that are really short - not everyone had an interesting experience with revival. The shortest chapter is not this one, it'll actually be tomorrow's, at only 126 words!


	10. True Colors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> False isn't happy with her results.

"Are you serious right now?"

False looked again at her purple gloves, her jacket, her green hair, and then frustratedly back at the Saturator with a huff.

"I look like a clown!" she scolded, as if she could confront Mumbo directly by talking to his machine.

Somebody giggled. It wasn't a hermit's laugh, she was pretty sure, but it seemed sort of familiar anyway.

"Oh, yeah, laugh it up." False rolled her eyes and stalked away. Nearby, she passed a sign advertising the future location of a "desaturator" - a machine Iskall was building specifically to reverse messes like hers. False apparently was not the first to have problems here. Well, whenever they opened that to the public, False was guaranteed to be the first in line.


	11. Return of the Living Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With everyone else happy with returning themselves to life, Cleo finds it a little harder to get back to how she needs to be.

Cleo also found herself at odds with the Saturator, much as False did, but also with some entirely unique problems. A quick look at her reflection showed that she had the same vibrantly glowing eyes that she’d had as a Greyskin, with the added “bonus” of those eyes now being surrounded by ridiculously garish colors. To make matters worse, she had a heartbeat again. It was a total mess, in her opinion.

At least the problem of being  _ alive _ was fairly easy to fix. She could only hope that the rest would follow after.

Cleo made a beeline for the Falsewell Museum, but hesitated before the door. What could she even say?

They were friends, or at least had been at one time. Cleo was pretty sure they were still on okay terms, since they at the very least still deigned to share a world with each other.

Not that she had much choice of who to turn to now. There was only one person Cleo truly trusted to do things right. With a sigh, Cleo opened the door.

_ "Welcome- oh." _

_ "Hi, Carol,"  _ Cleo grumbled, switching to Zombie "language" out of courtesy. Carol could still understand spoken English, but had long ago lost the ability to speak it.  _ "I need a favor." _

Carol looked Cleo up and down with blank, dark eyes.  _ "I see that." _

_ "Yeah, it's pretty obvious what I'm going to ask," _ Cleo confirmed.  _ "You'll do it, then?" _

_ "Is that really what you want?" _

_ "Obviously,"  _ Cleo replied,  _ "otherwise I wouldn't have asked. You know me, Carol. You know how I prefer to live - or not live." _

_ "Why did you cure yourself then?" _

Cleo sighed and rolled her eyes.  _ "I really shouldn't have. I felt like I had to, for this game, that turned out to be cursed. It was going to be an anti-deadist statement, but I don't think anyone really paid attention to that bit in the end." _ She coughed. Zombie language was hard on a human throat.  _ "Please, Carol? You're my only hope of getting back to normal." _

_ "Fine," _ Carol growled.  _ "But just this once." _

Cleo thanked her well and climbed over the counter. Carol bared her teeth and lunged.

\-----

Cleo was moving. It wasn’t much, and she was pretty sure she had been in motion for much of the time she’d been unconscious. But this was a more familiar, gentle rocking. Timbers creaked in time with the sway.

Cleo was feeling... better. She did a mental once-over and smiled in relief. She certainly  _ felt _ undead again. Only then did she open her eyes.

She had been put into a bed, concealed from the rest of the world by a curtain of red banners. She was back in her quarters, on her ship. Had Carol really taken her all the way here?

Her question was answered when she looked around. On the side table, next to the usual diluted fire resistance, was a half-used potion of harming, which Cleo drank without hesitation. Laying on the bed was a piece of paper. Cleo picked it up. Written on the paper were three words, in so messy of a scrawl that Cleo was the only person who had any hope of reading them:

_ “Now we’re even.” _


	12. Vault Containment Protocol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TFC just wants to get back to work.

TFC was the very first customer of the Saturator. He didn’t like changing things about himself, and being undead was certainly a major change. Life-changing, he might even say.

He stood in the doorway and stepped on the button. But he hesitated too long, and the door slammed shut in his face. He grumbled, watching colors fly inside, waiting for it to finish, then tried again, this time managing to duck in.

The sensory assault of the Saturator was too distracting for him to focus on what was actually happening to him, but a quick check of himself afterward proved that he was back to normal. Satisfied, TFC went about his day.

The magic behind the saturator let him go. He was too easygoing in good times and stubborn in hard times to be an interesting plaything. Besides, his success with the Saturator would draw the others in, making them believe that nothing would go awry...


	13. If You Could Turn Back Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keralis looks for answers in the place he came from.

Keralis squeezed through the bars of the fence and crept along the edge of the trees in the compound. Being back here made him nervous. The strange diamond portal he had stumbled out of months ago pulled gently at him, as if it wanted him to go through again. But he wasn’t here for that. He was here for a machine that he had only heard rumors of, something stored away deep underground. He was sure it must be in the same part of the facility where he himself had been briefly locked away. Hopefully he could remember the way there.

After a brief, but harrowing dash across a runway, Keralis made it into a warehouse of oddities. He skirted away from the room on the right. At the end of the hallway was a set of vault doors - which, thanks to Doc’s help during Demise, Keralis knew exactly how to open - and on the other side, a long drop. Keralis took an entirely unnecessary breath in anticipation of the water at the bottom, and jumped.

He dripped across the floor, looking around in curiosity. He had never been this far into the facility. But before he could investigate an open chamber, a deep voice behind him froze him in his tracks. “What are you doing here? This area is off-limits.”

Keralis turned around and forced a pleasant smile. “Oh! Hi Doc! I was just, erm, exploring your beautiful park! Seeing the sights! I maybe got a little bit lost, but-”

Doc scowled. “Right. In the middle of the night, obviously trying to hide - we have security cameras, Keralis, you should know that - you pass your  _ own former holding cell, _ go through two vault doors, and start heading straight for a specific room down here, because you just got lost.”

Keralis nodded enthusiastically. “Yep! Took a wrong turn!”

Doc raised his trident. “Why are you  _ really _ here? Answer carefully.”

Keralis slumped. “I heard there was a time machine down here...”

“A common rumor,” Doc replied. “What do  _ you _ need with a time machine?”

Keralis backed up one step and indicated his grey skin. “To bring me back to before I died. It was the first thing I could think of.”

“You’ll have to try something else,” Doc told him. “No one is allowed down here except me and Scar, and the time machine alone wouldn’t- hey!”

Keralis had turned and bolted for the room. He took four steps before a trident buried itself in his back.

The trident snapped back to Doc’s hand as he stalked over to Keralis’ body, prepared to save any items that dropped and return them. 

But the grey form on the ground didn’t fade. The longer it persisted, the more worried Doc became. Had he messed up, by killing someone who was already dead? He knelt by Keralis, watching blood slowly seep from the trident wounds.

_ Red _ blood. And why would a dead body bleed-?

Doc gasped and stumbled back to his feet, watching color spread gradually outward from the three holes and the holes heal themselves. After only a couple of minutes, Keralis stirred, inhaled deeply, and pushed himself up to gather his bearings. He saw Doc standing over him and startled, scrambling backward.

“What-” Keralis looked around furtively, panicking further when he found himself still in the bowels of Area 77. “No, no no! Not-” He suddenly registered his quick breathing, and his panic turned to confusion. “Wait. I’m alive? I’m alive! But how?” He looked to Doc for answers.

Doc had none. “I don’t know. Some sort of resonance, maybe, with me, or with the energies in Area 77. I want to study this further, but I don’t want to detain you again if I don’t have to. You got what you came here for, somehow. Now you need to leave.”

Keralis nodded again and cautiously approached the access tube. Doc let him pass. “Thank you, Doc! If you need me for anything, I’ll be in New New Hermitville.”

Doc bared his teeth in half a smile. “I’ll keep in touch.”

In the next moment, Keralis was gone, flying up and away to his home.


	14. Crushing Guilt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bdubs found his own path to life. But how could a device with no magic embedded within, help anyone at all...?

Bdubs didn’t trust any of the magic being used by the other hermits. Sure, it looked like it was working just fine, but Bdubs was determined to find his own way. Which was how he ended up experimenting with an object in the middle of his “torture room”.

So maybe building something that would crush the leftover Demise magic out of him like juice from a berry was thinking a little too literally. But it was worth a shot, right? And maybe he could squeeze some color into himself while he was at it - that seemed important. If it worked  _ really _ well, maybe he would even build one near the other machines!

Bdubs crawled into the small space between block and piston. This test run would be manually operated, so that he could get out easily if he needed to. He grabbed the lever in front of his face and pulled.

The piston thumped down on him. If he’d had air in his lungs to worry about, it would have been knocked out of him. He felt a tiny twinge of... was that magic, after all? Something had certainly happened, and it counteracted the pain of the crushing piston quite effectively. Maybe this was actually going to work. He released the piston, and pulled the lever again.

And again.

And again.

After about 20 repetitions, he started feeling pops in the joints of his spine with each pull. He was pretty sure he cracked a rib 63 lever pulls in, and another one at about 147. He was starting to lose count, and hope, as his still-grey hand pulled the lever again. The magic he had felt before was clearly getting stronger, not draining away.

One more for good luck. He pulled the lever again. He felt another rib break, and then he blacked out.

Bdubs found himself back in the bedroom of his castle, everything in working order, and his skin back to its usual deep brown. Had his crusher killed him? He checked chat to make sure, and found that, sure enough, he had apparently... suffocated to death. That wouldn't have happened if the death was what un-demised him, because Greyskins couldn't suffocate. He must have gotten trapped under the piston, been restored to life, and THEN died. Which meant his machine worked! Bdubs jumped out of bed excitedly. Before he got too far, though, he realized that the crusher had really torn up his clothes. He would have to fix that, but for the moment he changed into a new, black shirt to go about his day. He was going to put this thing right next to the Saturator, so that anyone passing by would see it, and then they'd have the choice of taking their chances with the Saturator, or using his machine for a surefire result.

  
\-----  
  


The next time Cub passed through the area, he noticed a new device on the lawn next to the other un-demising machines. There was no magic in this one, and Cub couldn't fathom how or why it could work on anyone. But here it was, waiting for someone to dare to try it.

**This is an odd one,** Cub reported.  **I don't want to take it down, but... this is clearly doing nothing for anybody. Permission to magic it up too? I can't imagine anyone trying this thing, but just in case. It'd be a shame if a hermit put themselves through this and came out with nothing to show for it.**

  
**If ye like,** came the reply.  **But do not waste too much effort. As ye said, it seems unlikely that anyone would choose this over the other option we have given them.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (if you didn't pick up on what's happening, it's residual Dragon Bros/wild magic reacting to Bdubs getting hurt, so if not for Cub the crusher would only work for dragon bros)


	15. Positive about the Negative

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joe gets exactly what he should have expected.

The irony was visible. Literally.

Joe could only assume that it was his punishment, somehow, to walk around as a photonegative version of himself. His punishment for gloating repeatedly about his victory over death, only to die in the very heart of the reapers' land. A turnabout of consequences, resulting in a turnabout of hue.

And it was his hue that was reversed, along with the way his shadows were cast, as Joe discovered when he tried to use the ever-popular Saturator to return himself to normal.

A red and black shirt and blue skin that shone white when it by all rights should have been in shadow were not ideal. But, seeing as the Saturator  _ had,  _ technically, done its job completely correctly, Joe was not exactly sure how he might get out of his predicament now. So, he just lived with it for a few days. It wasn't like the color negativity was negatively affecting him; it was just strange to process.

Joe had almost resigned himself to waiting until he could get Xisuma's advice and help, when a new device appeared in the field outside the Saturator one day. Unlike the Saturator, this small, medieval-looking device made no claim of "fixing" one's color; instead, it promised to make one's colors "what you want" and restore to life. Joe already had the second part taken care of. He hoped the first part would still work.

  
  
  


Vexnos was duly surprised to find someone actually using the second machine their servant had given them control over. It seemed unpleasant at best. Under other circumstances, they would have had their fun with this human, continuing to play with color a few more times before letting him go. But even the Vex would feel bad about not giving this human anything to show for his torturous effort. So, by the time Joe was finished with the device, he simply looked normal again, and for him, all was again as it should be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost there! If I'd been intelligent about it I would have put all the dull chapters at the beginning and left my favorites, like Ren's and Scar's and Impulse's, at the end, but oh well. Next chapter is the final chapter and it'll be a pretty good ending to it I think.


	16. Pressing Concerns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mumbo built the machine that helped many a hermit. But it was another's magic that truly brought life.

Mumbo kept forgetting he was undead. It wasn’t like he ever paid attention to whether he was  _ breathing _ or not. Who does that, anyway? And then the mental part of the curse - which Mumbo wasn’t entirely sure had even gotten hold of him in the first place - vanished so soon after he died, so really he had just been going about his business, only occasionally startled by his grey hands. Iskall, of course, teased him mercilessly about this.

People were quickly realizing that they were going to stay undead for a while, and everyone started working on ways to reverse it. Mumbo was no exception. All he had at his disposal was redstone, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying.

He was internally sighing at a test that had  _ almost _ done something when someone startled him from behind. “Hey man, what are you up to?”

Mumbo jumped and turned around to face Cub, who, it turned out, was back to normal already. “Hullo, Cub. I was just trying to work out how to get out of this grey situation. How’d you fix yourself so fast?”

“Oh, you know,” Cub replied, with a blue glint in his eyes, “magic.”

“Could use some of that ‘magic’ myself,” Mumbo muttered without thinking.

“You could, now?” Cub echoed, suddenly interested.

Mumbo, noticing the change in attitude, narrowed his eyes. “Now, hang on a second. Do I want  _ your _ magic involved here? No offense, but-”

“None taken,” Cub interrupted, “none taken. It’s understandable why you’d feel that way, but I promise, I’m looking to help. And you know us and promises, right?”

Mumbo took a moment to remind himself that this was a normal fellow hermit he was talking to. Cub wasn’t some inscrutable, inherently chaotic and possibly dangerous force - he just worked for one. Cub was human just like most of the rest of them, and had experienced his Demise along with everyone else. Of course he would want to help out, since he clearly had the ability to.

“Yeah, yeah, you and your promises and contracts and such,” Mumbo grumbled. “Right then, what did you have in mind? I’m not exactly keen on being in your direct line of fire, so to speak.”

Cub gestured to the redstone mess behind Mumbo. “It looks like you’re already working on something, right? Redstone and Vex magic don’t always go together too kindly, but I’ll bet between the two of us we can work something out. No one else would need to know that it’s magic; most people will just assume it’s all your amazing redstone work.”

\-----

After Mumbo built the body and wiring of the Saturator, he got distracted with other projects while waiting on Cub to add the final touches. Projects led to more projects, and soon Mumbo found that he was the last person to use his own machine. He finally caught another glimpse of his grey hands during a lull in his inventing and decided it was time to do something about it. He went straight there, not bothering to clean the redstone dust off his hands or out of his suit before hopping inside. Today, he did actually pay attention, and could tell immediately that Cub's magic did everything that he had promised it would...

And more. By Mumbo's reckoning, he probably should have showered or at least brushed himself off before using his machine; the Saturator seemed to have amplified and spread the color of the redstone that Mumbo always had on his clothes. He had been turned  _ very _ red. Skin, suit, even his hair. Actually, it reminded him of a very bad sunburn, though thankfully not painful like one. 

Sighing and looking around, Mumbo spotted Iskall, still in their dragon mask, working on a similar-looking structure across the river. Curious, Mumbo went over to check it out.

Iskall broke out in laughter as soon as they saw Mumbo. “What has happened to you??”

Mumbo eyed Iskall’s rainbow-colored suit. “Same thing that happened to you, I’m guessing. Can’t figure out why you’d use my machine, though, since you didn’t die.”

Iskall tugged at their sleeve. “I didn’t really need to, did I? I just thought it’d be funny. Which, I mean, it is.”

“The colors suit you, actually,” Mumbo observed.

“Well, your suit looks pretty nice too,” Iskall replied, “with that rich red. It’s just, well, the rest of you that looks odd. You know, as you were walking over, from a distance I almost thought you were Python.”

That got Mumbo laughing too, briefly. He really had turned so red he could have been mistaken for the red creeper in his suit. Python hadn’t been with them for months, though, having vanished mysteriously in a thunderstorm. Even Xisuma wasn’t sure what could have happened, but he reassured everyone that Python was probably fine - despite Doc’s reminders about what can happen around creepers and thunderstorms.

After that sombering reminder, Iskall changed the subject back to their post-Saturator colors. “Here, I’ve been working on something that may work for you as well.” They explained their “Desaturator”, made specifically to help the half dozen or so people who had been affected by the mischievous magic of the Saturator. “I haven’t tested it yet, so if you want to be my beta tester...”

“I mean,” Mumbo decided, “what have I got to lose, really?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that, everyone's... well... not everyone is quite back to normal yet ;) But this is where the epilogues end! Thanks for reading :)


End file.
